Water flows from the release valve at the base of Medina Lake Dam. The water is used by farmers down river. Monday, July 2, 2012.

Water flows from the release valve at the base of Medina Lake Dam. The water is used by farmers down river. Monday, July 2, 2012.

Photo: BOB OWEN, Express-News

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The construction project at the Medina Lake Dam is reinforcing the structure, with 33 "anchors" which tie the top of the dam, through the structure, all the way down into the bedrock below the dam. Monday, July 2, 2012.

The construction project at the Medina Lake Dam is reinforcing the structure, with 33 "anchors" which tie the top of the dam, through the structure, all the way down into the bedrock below the dam. Monday, July

MICO — As anniversary celebrations go, the one observed Saturday on a rocky overlook above a nearly empty Medina Lake was long on fond remembrances and bicultural good wishes, and short on confections and flash.

And with local beauty queens handing out programs, boy scouts helping with traffic, a military band and a Fort Sam Houston honor guard adding gravitas, the aging dam got the royal treatment Saturday from everyone but the weatherman.

One local official made light of the drought conditions that have reduced the lake to 13 percent capacity, revealing much of the concrete dam face as well as once-submerged caves and rock formations.

“If you've come here for the first time, you'll recognize we have held up filling the lake so you can see what it looked like back in 1912 when they were filling it up,” joked Medina County Judge James E. Barden.

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“We plan to let it start raining tomorrow,” he added with a straight face.

When it was completed after 18 months of urgent construction, the dam, which feeds a series of canals that have made a fertile breadbasket of country downstream, was the largest in Texas and the fourth-largest in the United States.

“If this dam weren't here, this would be a hillside of scrub oak above a small river, nothing but deer leases. There would be no farming, no corn, no cotton downstream,” said Roberto Pachecano, whose grandfather worked on the dam.

As suggested by the various national flags behind the speaker's lectern, the dam construction was an ambitious international collaboration, involving British money, American ingenuity and Mexican labor, as one man put it.

And among the roughly 300 people who turned out Saturday morning were some proud descendents of people of all three nations.

“It was nothing but hard work: Breaking rocks. Pick and shovel. They were working night and day. It was a great accomplishment,” he said.

Nearby sat William Springall, 82, of Phoenix, whose grandfather William John Springall, a British architect, designed the dam and other regional landmarks, including the Pecos River high bridge.

And of all the stories Springall recalls from his eccentric grandfather, his favorite relates to his first visit to the Menger Hotel.

“He said, ‘I came downstairs on the first morning we were there, dressed as any proper English gentleman would be, and the cowboys in the lobby laughed at me,'” Springall said.

“And he never really forgave them. He died an Englishman living in Lyle, Texas, at 96.” he said.

Beyond celebrating the construction of the dam, the event Saturday was also held to commemorate the estimated 70 people who died during its construction. Not a few were Mexican laborers who suffered the hardest conditions.

Among the speakers was Terry Camacho, a Mexican consular official from San Antonio.

She cited the dam as an example of the many improvements Mexicans have brought to the United States over the decades by their hard work and knowledge.